On A Desert Night North of Palm Springs: A Poem
On A Desert Night North of Palm Springs: A Poem
It was on a still and tranquil desert night
underneath canopy of stars shining bright
that we rode an old fashioned mule train up into the hills
the night was warm and devoid of chills
along the San Andreas fault the trail ran
a long narrow crack along desert sand
It was frightening to see above ground this famous fault that for Southern California could spell such woe
if the earth plates choose to massively shift and let chaos go
But San Andreas would show no signs of rage tonight
as desert sunset merged with evening twilight
The mules pulled us up to the dinner tent
with our burro friends it was time well spent
and now to our meals our little tour group would go
and mirth and good conversation would bubble and flow
The singer with guitar went from table to table and sang sweet melody
on the backdrop of starlit evening desert so far from the sea
Our table was the last to which he did come
you’d think he’d be tired but with his magical guitar his fingers did strum
and when it looked like he had finished his play
my father smiled, did turn to him and say
You remind me of a singer I listened to on the radio as a boy
whose voice and his songs filled my parents’ house with joy
Jimmie Rodgers was his name
of country music fame
for there was a later Jimmie Rodgers who a couple of decades later also sang
as the clock marking the decade of the ’50s rang.
The singer stopped putting his guitar back into his case
he stopped and looked at my father’s face
Said he, that’s quite the supreme compliment to have compared me to either one
He once again played his guitar, the music had not stopped but only begun
And the music to our small table the singer continued to play
And the songs echoed over desert and hills to places far way.
-A poem written by Christopher
Friday April 17th 2015.
-inspired by a magical night spent with my dad and our tour group on a desert hill just north of Palm Springs, California back in January 1997.
Renfield In Southern California
Renfield In Southern California
“A young woman’s buttocks are still stinging after a drive-by spanking that occurred at a street corner in West Hollywood last night…”
Renfield turned off the alarm clock radio in his hotel room.
Yes, he was definitely in Southern California all right.
Southern California would be the only place on Earth where such a news story would happen.
. . .
Renfield contacted an entertainment reporter he knew at KTLA Channel 5 News in Los Angeles for the scoop on Nero Wilson and The Cleveland Cleavers.
He had deduced from stories on the Internet that this band knew the whereabouts of the ET gray who crashed his UFO in the desert near Mesa, Arizona.
He learned they were playing at The Tropicana Nightclub in downtown Los Angeles.
Renfield would attend their concert tonight.
. . .
Renfield R. Renfield passed a shoe shine stand as he walked along the street.
That was interesting, Renfield thought to himself.
He had often seen shoe shine stands in old classic American movies from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.
He didn’t know they still existed.
Renfield continued walking in what he presumed was the direction of The Tropicana Nightclub.
He happened to pass a Chinese restaurant where he noticed that embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was sitting and complaining in a loud voice, “Why are there so many Asians in this place?”.
This gave Renfield an idea.
He still had an hour to kill before the Nero Wilson and The Cleveland Cleavers concert at The Tropicana.
He returned to the shoe shine stand where he bought some black shoe polish from the shoe shine boy.
He then borrowed a compact mirror from a woman wearing a sexy Halloween nurse’s outfit who said her name was Akira and she was trying to find her way to West Hollywood.
Renfield replied in his British accent that he was a stranger in Los Angeles and had no idea where West Hollywood was located.
As Akira held the compact mirror for him, Renfield applied the black shoe polish to his face, neck, arms and hands.
He borrowed some rouge lipstick from her and made his lips much bigger.
He soon looked like a blackface Al Jolson about to perform in one of those minstrel shows from the 1920s.
He thanked Akira for the use of the red lipstick and the compact mirror and continued walking down the street.
He then went into the Chinese restaurant where Donald Sterling was sitting.
Upon entering the restaurant and helping himself to both a top hat and walking stick from the coat check, Renfield immediately burst into a rendition of that old Al Jolson song Mammy.
He sang (mixing up the lyrics of the two old Al Jolson songs Mammy and Swanee), “Mammy, how I love ya. How I love ya.”
He then went up to Donald Sterling and gave him a kiss on the lips.
As Renfield left the restaurant and continued down the street, he could hear the restaurant’s doorman shouting up and down the street, “Paging an ambulance for Mr. Sterling. Ambulance for Mr. Sterling.”
To be continued.
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Saturday May 24th
2014.
Sekhmet Explains The ET Gray
Sekhmet Explains The ET Gray
Nero Wilson sat in the hotel dining room drinking orange juice and eating pancakes.
It had been a couple of days since he had discovered the ET gray in his hotel bedroom closet.
He found out that the ET gray had been introduced to his band’s lead singer Sekhmet after the open-air desert concert outside Mesa, Arizona by a groupie of the band named Lana who had then made out with the band’s drummer Dave Wilson (stage name Abbott Costello).
Sekhmet had hidden the ET gray in her suitcase telling everyone that it was just a teddy bear a fan had given her.
And so the ET gray had been in her suitcase the whole time they had driven from Arizona to California.
The ET gray had then been in the closet in Sekhmet’s hotel room but he had gone out in the night to take an extraterrestrial leak and when he came back in the darkness, all the hotel rooms had looked the same to him so he entered Nero Wilson’s room and closet by mistake.
Stories about Nero Wilson’s finding the ET gray in his closet had hit the Internet the same way a diarrhea ridden acrobatic knife thrower’s shit would hit the fan.
Of course one good thing about the story was that it made for two sold out performances the past couple of nights at The Tropicana Nightclub a small venue in downtown Los Angeles where his band Nero Wilson and The Cleveland Cleavers were performing.
Plus he had also been invited to be a guest and have his band perform on The Arsenio Hall Show while he was here in Los Angeles as a result of the story about him and the ET gray.
. . .
“I see six young people in Iran were arrested for filming a tribute video to Pharrell Williams’ song Happy,” Amadeus Emanon remarked as he ate his Happy Meal from McDonald’s.
“I suppose the assholes who govern Iran don’t want anyone in the country to be happy,” Renfield R. Renfield replied as he ate his Filet ‘o Fish.
“I suppose not,” Amadeus answered.
Amadeus then noticed that Renfield was booking a British Airways flight from London to Los Angeles on his laptop.
“Why are you flying to Los Angeles?” Amadeus asked.
Renfield winced.
He dare not tell bigmouth chatterbox Amadeus that he had been hired by their boss’ Archenemy the Vampiress Isis to steal a laser death ray gun from an ET gray.
Nor that the ET gray had shown up in Los Angeles according to the Internet’s leading social networking sites.
So Renfield said, “I’m going to see how my porn movie company in Orange County is doing.”
It was perfectly true that Renfield owned a small pornographic film studio in Orange County and he occasionally checked in from time to time to see how they were doing (not to mention personally auditioning young actresses who were hoping to break into the industry).
“Oh I see,” Amadeus decided to change the subject, “that Prince Charles while visiting an Immigration Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada compared Vladimir Putin’s recent actions to Hitler’s actions in the 1930s.”
“He did?” Renfield suddenly turned white.
For it was Renfield’s latest project and goal and dream in life that he be awarded a knighthood from The Queen sometime this year.
Renfield immediately went on to Facebook and unfriended Vladimir Putin.
. . .
“I’m going to kill him,” Russian President Vladimir Putin shrieked and foamed at the mouth to Russian Vampiress and FSB agent Svetlana Kireeva.
“Who?” Svetlana asked, “Charles, Prince of Wales for comparing you to Hitler?”.
“No,” Putin went apoplectic, “Renfield R. Renfield for unfriending me on Facebook.”
To be continued.
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Wednesday May 21st
2014.
Nero Wilson and The ET Gray
Nero Wilson and The ET Gray
Nero Wilson the lead electrical violinist for the band Nero Wilson and The Cleveland Cleavers was lying in bed in his hotel in Los Angeles California.
He was playing a gig somewhere in LA tonight.
He couldn’t remember where.
A few nights ago he and his band were playing an open-air concert in the desert outside Mesa, Arizona- the same night that rumours were circulating that a UFO had crashed in the vicinity of the concert.
Maybe a UFO had crashed that night.
After all members of his band were acting pretty strange since then.
Well even stranger than usual he should say.
His cousin Dave Wilson (whose band name was Abbott Costello) the drummer had naturally got lucky with a groupie that night and had made out with a hot looking brunette named Lana who coincidentally was wearing a mini dress with a picture of ET on it.
His cousin Charlie Wilson (whose band name was Bud Lou) the electrical guitarist was once again complaining that he had no one to make out with.
And at the rate he was going, Charlie had whined, it was going to take him forever to equal Mick Jagger’s bedding record.
The band’s lead (and only) female singer Sekhmet had hidden what appeared to be a large teddy bear in her suitcase and wouldn’t let anyone near it.
All the while drinking bottles of blood (of course that wasn’t so unusual. That was something Sekhmet had done since Nero first met her).
Then they had left Arizona and had driven to California in their old 1960s Volkswagen van that still had old hippy peace symbols on it as well as stickers that said Make Love Not War, Peace Now, Ban The Bomb, and Nuke Nixon.
Sekhmet was sleeping in her coffin in the back (as she always did whenever they drove in the daylight).
Her suitcase now had a combination lock on it.
Charlie and Dave were busy performing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony with their coughing and hacking and respiratory problems as a result of driving with the windows open (the van’s air conditioning system had apparently died on the same day as Charles de Gaulle according to the used car salesman from whom they bought the van) and they were inhaling all that smoke blowing in from the Southern California wild fires as they drove west.
Nero Wilson the only member of the group who was wearing an oxygen mask was having no problems as he drove the van.
Quite a memorable trip west, Nero thought as he went and showered.
When he had finished showering and shaving and brushing his teeth, he came out of the bathroom and went over to the closet.
When he opened the closet, an ET gray walked out.
As rumours on the Internet social networking sites would put it later, ET gray comes out of the closet in Nero Wilson’s California hotel room.
Nero Wilson’s mother Agrippina almost choked on her mushroom soup back home in Cleveland Ohio as she read the rumour that had been shared over 17,155 times on a close friend’s Facebook status.
To be continued.
-A vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Monday May 19th
2014.
Dracul Van Helsing 